Page 19 of Hit For Six (Balls and Banter #1)

Sally wasn’t Monty’s real aunt but she’d insisted that he call her such the moment he’d moved into his Royal Crescent apartment.

Aunt Sally’s last name, on the other hand, was Lunn, although she claimed that she wasn’t in any way related to the original baker of the city’s famous buns.

She was his token granny now that one of his real ones had passed away, and the other one had cut his mother– and consequently her offspring– out of her life after Helena had taken offence at her choice of second husband and his lower middle class roots.

Monty had tried to covertly reconnect with Granny Carmichael and his Scottish heritage but Eliza Carmichael was a terrible gossip, who loved to push her daughter’s buttons and ensure that word wended its way back to southern England.

Now he was strictly forbidden from further correspondence.

‘Monty! What a delight,’ said Sally when she finally opened the door.

‘Come in– although, this is a bit early for our usual, isn’t it?

I’m afraid I can’t offer you a nightcap just yet– I’ve barely digested my supper.

Oh,’ she gasped as she registered his unusual choice of attire, then frowned as she looked down at her baggy jeans and rainbow jumper.

‘I hadn’t realised we were dressing up.’

A once weekly hot chocolate with all the trimmings, a generous tot of rum, a pile of biscuits, and an armchair debate about the state of the world, had long been the mismatched couple’s ritual. Sally was a night owl. And as wise as one too.

‘You look delightful as ever, Aunt. I’m sorry to catch you off guard but I need a bit of a favour, and I’m willing to be your apprentice because it might take a while.’

Monty gestured at his get-up and grimaced.

Sally gave Monty the onceover as she escorted him into the lounge, her brow creasing momentarily as she turned him around to assess the extent of the job. He felt like a car going into the garage for a service.

‘We need to replicate this tonight?’

‘We do, I’m afraid. I’ll explain once we get going.’

‘Then it’s a good job the sewing machine is still out and Mr. Bobbin from two doors down has lumbered me with umpteen crotch adjustments for his trousers.’ Woah. Way too much info. ‘Let’s get you inside and pinned up.’

Four hours later, Sally had ditched Monty’s handiwork, using his mockup as a template to recreate Lola’s asymmetrical dress with some of her own spare material. It was as identical to the real deal as one could get. No wonder the woman had been a seamstress for the Theatre Royal in her former life.

‘Cheers!’ said Monty, toasting a mug of cocoa with his neighbour, guzzling half of it down the hatch in one and relishing the burn.

Sally sipped her drink a little more thoughtfully and then announced:

‘If it’s meant to be, it will be, Monty.

But let’s hope this assertion of yours will give romance even more of a fighting chance.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my younger years, it’s that time flies and before you know it, you’ll be looking back on all of those juicy what ifs that you might have made a reality had you only been a bit braver.

So try to limit them. Even if you make a fool of yourself.

Especially if you make a fool of yourself. ’

Sally raised her eyebrows again at Monty’s dress, implying that he needed to take heed of those last pearls of her wisdom, and they hugged, Monty yawning embarrassingly, despite his younger years.

He trudged wearily back up the stairs to his apartment and crashed onto his bed, closing his eyes as the old woman’s words swirled around his head… and then he remembered the other thing he’d vowed to do before he hit the pillow.

***

The next morning, Monty woke with a start and a headache, his mind racing with all of the facts he’d learned about Sensory Processing Disorder before he’d sparked out.

He had even more sympathy for Lola now. Even if that was the last thing she would want.

Even if she only had a mild case of SPD.

It sounded like it could be a minefield and he vowed that he’d inform himself as much as he could about her condition, regardless of whether he should be lucky enough to lay his eyes on her again.

The alternative was a depressing thought.

But he couldn’t dwell on it. Today’s urgent meeting might have been pushed back to ten o’clock and he might only have snatched four hours’ sleep, but Monty needed to make coffee, shower, and jump in the car.

Beau-re-mi’s headquarters were located in a stunning– but not particularly accessible– village in the Cotswolds. In an increasingly hybrid industry, Monty, like many of the other staff members of the fashion brand, only drove in a couple of times a week.

All eyes turned to the door when he finally walked in twenty minutes late.

But he couldn’t have helped his tardiness if he’d tried.

His heart had gone out to the homeless guy shacked up in the doorway of a property at the end of the Crescent that morning.

The ground floor apartment had recently gone on the market for just shy of a million quid and the juxtaposition had punched Monty hard in the gut.

He’d given a thankful ‘Beefy’ a few notes and had been reluctant to leave when the older man had opened up to him about his difficult teenage years that had led to him running away from home and waving goodbye to his dream of becoming a professional rugby player.

The chasm between them had struck a deep chord.

‘Monty? What on earth? Is this meant to be some kind of joke?’

Frederick, who was standing teacher-like before the meeting table giving a flip chart backed speech to his employees, swept his pointer stick up and held it mid-air, as if he’d just led his orchestra into a crescendo.

Monty snapped out of his musing, remembering that he had, indeed, changed into a floaty dress in the gents’ loos.

He’d toyed with the idea of driving in his outfit to save time, and swiftly changed his mind when he’d considered the complexity of using brake, clutch and accelerator.

Monty still hadn’t embraced the automatic car, his decade old Polo annoyed his father.

Although, surely, if one’s folk were modelling themselves on old money, they’d want the prestigious and trustworthy gear system of a vintage Bentley.

‘Absolutely not,’ his son replied. ‘I couldn’t be more serious.’

‘What are you doing, then, dressed up like that?’ Frederick barked, eyeing Monty as if he was a drag queen.

‘We’re having a serious meeting here so we can deflect some of the accusatory pieces that have been bobbing about on social media.

God, I curse the day of its invention. The sheer audacity of the general public to suggest that we’ve been cutting corners with the quality of our fabric!

Organza costs a bomb. And the absolute irony when this sordid situation came about via the actions of a Beau-re-mi employee…

My flesh and blood, no less,’ he hissed between clenched teeth.

‘Well now. That all sounds a little chicken and egg to me,’ Monty quipped, having excellent hearing, even if he was standing on the other side of the room.

Talk about another punch to the body parts.

Saturday’s camaraderie couldn’t have been more fake.

Frederick didn’t care about Monty’s cricketing career at all.

It had been ages since they’d had an argument in the workplace, but his father would have been in full-on battle mode no matter Monty’s choice of outfit.

‘As I was saying,’ Frederick went back to his diversion strategy and Monty let the meaningless twaddle go in one ear and straight back out the other.

‘Does anybody else have any ideas? The positive pieces ref do-gooder Keanu are fantastique , but the hype will soon die a death. He doesn’t have any celebrity friends to influence.

The press will turn back on us before we know it. ’

‘Throw me this ball.’ Monty interrupted, shocking everyone in the room and jumping on the opportunity to hijack the meeting for once and for all.

He produced a cricket ball from the pocket of his trousers, hidden beneath the dress. Monty aimed it at his father, who definitely hadn’t lost his reflexes, catching it before it hit several expensive objets d’art off his desk.

‘I’ve warned you, Montgomery. And for heaven’s sake, take that blasted apparel off! You look like David bloody Beckham.’

Monty wasn’t one for vast coverings of tattoos but he’d take the compliment. Becks had been an awesome sportsman and he could rock any fashion item under the sun.

‘Who wants to be a volunteer?’ He ignored his father, who couldn’t resist rubbing the ball against his thigh as if he was a paceman at Lords playing the traditional version of the game.

He hated it when Frederick called him Montgomery.

Especially in the workplace. The air became thick with silence and everybody looked awkward, even if some of the people around the table reported directly to Monty and not his father.

Ultimately, they knew who paid their mortgages.

‘Fine, I’ll pick someone at random: Athena, would you come here, please, and stand to my left? ’

Athena rose reluctantly and stood at Monty’s side. She couldn’t exactly refuse when she was one of his departmental managers.

‘Right then, Frederick.’ Conversely, Monty always called his father by his full name in the workplace.

‘I want you to tap back into your childhood sporting days and lob the ball as if you’ve just hit a six.

Don’t worry about the windows. As you’ve probably guessed, we’re going to recreate Friday’s scene.

Athena is besotted with me.’ He broke off at this point and looked at his startled colleague in earnest. ‘For fictional purposes only.’ She visibly relaxed and he trained his eyes on the faces around the meeting table.

‘I’ve given her the cold shoulder and now she’s going to get her revenge while I intercept the ball.

But before any of that happens, I’m going to do a quick circuit of the room so you can individually inspect the ties on my dress, which are currently fastened securely in a trio of small bows. ’

Frederick looked far from amused but Monty knew that he’d play ball.

Literally. If only so they could move on and he could lecture him in private later.

And what a lecture it would be. Monty couldn’t recall having ever challenged his father to such an extent and in front of so many people.

But Lola was worth it. For the mere sixty or so hours that he’d known her, she deserved this. Even if he never saw her again.

Monty walked around the table’s edge, only moving on to the next person once every head had nodded its assent at the fastenings of his dress.

True, it would have been easier to do this with the actual Beau-re-mi garment but he was a muscular guy and he had no idea if the Bath branch would still have it in stock.

There was no time to lose hunting through every room in HQ to see if somebody had a sample that would stretch across his frame.

Feeling emboldened by the feedback, he returned to a confused Athena, whose eyes were scanning the faces of her colleagues in the hope they might offer to exchange places.

‘As I position myself to catch the ball, I want you to gently tug at me as if you’re opening somebody else’s Christmas present,’ said Monty, matter-of-factly, gesturing to the bows on his left.

‘This is utter tosh!’ cried Frederick.

‘But imagine a camera’s pointing at you,’ Monty continued, determined to ignore the way his words must be grating on his father. ‘Speed and discretion are of the essence.’

‘Okaaaay,’ Athena replied.

‘Frederick, would you do the honours, please?’ Monty instructed, deadly serious.

Monty’s father picked his jaw off the floor and somehow composed himself briefly enough to throw the ball at his son, red-faced, hard and admirably precisely.

Everything happened like clockwork after that.

Athena could have been a magician. As Monty’s hands secured their grip on the ball, reenacting the final journey of Friday’s six, he felt a light pull at his side as she grabbed all three bows in her hand and his dress slipped from the opposite shoulder, falling to the floor to create a fabric puddle at his feet.

‘And this comes courtesy of a voile reenactment! So, you see, the very unique design of the asymmetrical Beau-re-mi dress actually lends itself to opportunists, regardless of the fabric. No.’ Monty shook his head in sync with his pointer finger.

‘That’s too tame a word.’ He paused to reflect on how better to phrase things.

‘What I’m trying to say is… Athena has perfectly demonstrated that the leech in the Panama hat standing next to the female victim at the cricket stadium is, in fact, the one behind all of this.

Those flimsy ties were pulled by His Truly, in turn coaxing the rest of the garment to slip away from the woman’s body, framing her as an exhibitionist.’

Monty let out a deep breath in readiness for his parting shot.

‘And now we need to put out an urgent statement of apology to the press.’

He wanted to add that Lola should be gifted a huge bouquet of flowers, but all of this would backfire if his father sensed that he somehow knew her.

So Monty stormed out of the room, not waiting to take in the expressions on his colleagues’ faces.

But when he’d got halfway down the corridor to the hotdesk banks, he realised he’d forgotten something and popped his head back around the door.

P.S. It’s a woman’s prerogative not to wear a bra.’